wayne stephen wrote:Jay - If you are going to say that , perhaps you should point out the specific practices that are deceptive to the permies. I for one have a few heroes but I don't worship anyone as infallible. I think this approach to agriculture is new and developing and pioneers push some boundaries . Outright fraud is another matter.
I visited in mid-April. One instance, and there were many, is the Racken house. I found it very overstocked with hens and the majority of them had increased feather loss, pale combs, and an overall unhealthy appearance. They were attempting to lay in too few nest boxes and some were jammed with three hens trying to lay in the same nest. Many hens had just laid on the floor in various places and I found one hen that looked dead but was merely very pale and listless, brooding a clutch of eggs under the edge of a feeder. I know broodies can look this way, so no bother but she too was missing a lot of feathers as well. Many hens were completely bare-backed and had feathers missing around the tail and vent. The waterers were thick with green mold on the surface of the reservoir.
I've been raising
chickens for over 35 years so I can pretty well tell if a
chicken has normal molt/feather loss, if it's rooster induced or from overstocking and the resulting feather picking. This was mid-April, no chicken should be in molt then and there wasn't a rooster in the place. Overstocking, filthy conditions, obvious poor conditioning of the animals. In his books he expounds on letting
chickens express their "chicken-ness" and on how bright, shiny feathers and healthy appearances should look on a chicken...not a chicken in the place would I keep on my own
land. I didn't witness one healthy looking bird.
I witnessed dead
rabbits in the cages with other rabbits climbing over top of them and flies buzzing around. Their stiff and flattened appearance tells me that they had been there for awhile. I've also raised meat rabbits, so I know how to raise them for optimal health. If full grown rabbits are dying in cages, one needs to explore the reason...and maybe, just maybe remove the dead animals? I listened to him speak on raising rabbits years ago and loved the talk and agreed with his methods and beliefs....then I saw the reality of his rabbits.
The pastured layers also were missing many feathers though they had paddocks on which to graze. They weren't overstocked to the area of forage but the eggmobile was much too small for that many birds. They too lacked the gloss and bright nature of a healthy flock, even though they had fresh pasture...something isn't right there. Mid-April is the time when everyone's flocks should look their best and here were these raggedy hens all over the place?
At his store I didn't see any eggs labeled as non-pastured eggs, so that left me wondering if the hens in the Racken House eggs were not sold? Or were they sold under the "pastured" label at the inflated price?
The pasture pens of broilers were also overstocked, with the grass under the pen merely trampled and covered in feces rather than "grazed" as he asserts. He also offers continuous feeds and, as anyone who raises broilers can attest, if offered feeds at all times, they will rarely, if ever, prefer to forage. Not that they could "forage" anything in their 10x10 tin box full of 50-75 other pooping, trampling, pushing broilers. The grass is yellow and compressed after they've been there but it isn't due to being grazed.
The
cattle were in lush, knee deep pasture that was simply lovely...and they were squirting the most liquid feces I'd ever seen on a cow that didn't have Johnes. We were literally straddling over rivers of
poop as we walked into the pasture. In his book he goes so far as to show a healthy "cow pat", as he refers to it, and describes it in detail. He also derides those who
feed in CAFOs for the liquid stool shooting out the backsides of their cattle. He also explains that when he puts his cows out on spring grass he provides
hay to balance their rumens and that the cows will eat from the hay ad lib if given a chance and know how much to eat to keep rumen balance so they won't get bloated or grass scours.
There wasn't a hay bale in sight and I asked how long the cows had been out on this grass, he replied they had been out on the grass for two months and even before I could ask about their feces, he interjected, "It's VERY rich graze." and then changed the subject. I'm thinking, "Yes, Mr. Salatin, I can see that...I'm not like the rest of the
city folk on the tour and I have read the books. Where's the healthy cow pats you are so proud of and why do your cattle squirt "all their nutrition out their backsides" as you criticize other farmers? I didn't say it but my mind,by this time, had its little hand up in the back of the
class.
I won't go on...but I could. You may think the sun rises and sets in Mr. Salatin because he is so very
sustainable in his farming practices. Yes, he has great methods for pasture building and land management. Yes, he has some great ideas on animal husbandry. And, yes, he has let his greed and
ego override his first intentions, IMO, and it's all about the marketing now.
He was rude to the children on the tour and downright sarcastic towards their parents, he was also inconsiderate of the people on the tour...it was advertised as a wagon tour and it was raining and cold. When we arrived, he stated he didn't want to get his
tractor wet and it was now going to be a walking tour. So, many people without the proper foot wear, elderly and children right along, were traipsing through very wet, muddy, rivers of feces, brush covered pathways, etc., to hear his talk. When any question was asked that would delve beneath what we were seeing or what he was telling, it was met with a terse reply and a change of subject. Only questions from those clearly new to a farm or anything on one were answered at length and it was usually questions one would hear from a grade school class that had never been on a farm.
I found his marketing practices deceptive(pasture raised broilers implies they eat the pasture and are not merely standing on it while eating commercially designed feeds, eggs from pastured hens does not mean eggs from overstocked hoop houses) and his overall attitude arrogant. I found his animal husbandry methods sounded good in the book but weren't applied at his own place. I found he is a great showman and a great publicist for himself. He also professes Christianity but I didn't see any evidence of that either, neither in his talks, in his treatment of the people there nor in his inflated pricing and marketing practices.
I guess I just like truth in advertising.
You can visit his place and it may look completely different by now or you may see other things when you go, YMMV, but an experienced eye can see what I saw and I won't be reading anymore books or watching anymore videos from that source. I've applied some of his methods at my place and they were good....I just wish he would do the same.
